A Modernized 1950s Beauty Photo Shoots

I am the luckiest woman in the world! I do what I love, work insanely hard and even get to collaborate with phenomenal photographers and models. There are a million and four things on my plate right now between my makeup career, my beauty company, my studio, my radio show, my amazing job with Bloginity and my loves; my daughter, my husband and my friends. However, sometimes I get to collaborate with amazing photographers who also happen to be friends. This is what happened a few weeks ago when I approached Pino Gomes and asked if he would shoot a beauty story with floral swimming caps that I found. Pino loved the pitch and my mind started to overflow with ideas, colors, angles and anything beauty related for these women.

Pino, who works with an astonishing array of models, was able to get four separate and stunning women for this shoot. He is an incredibly passionate person and had his own vision to bring to the shoot. He said he was “driven by the lust to portray the pastel colors that breathes the best moments of the golden era… I envision a woman who is digging inside her grandmother’s color palette to find herself in a modern world; hungry for purity, style and grace.” Something inside me resonated with these words and I was excited that we both were able to bring our combined creativity to the story.

Once the models had arrived, it was time to get to work: studying each of their faces to see which color palette would be the most flattering on each woman and which color cap would go with their skin tone, their eyes and their personalities. I think the end result is a stunning ode to a modern 50’s vibe. Cool, clean and beautiful.

Each model had such different features. Because it is a beauty story and I did not want the only connecting piece to be the swimming caps, each model had similar makeup, solely adjusted for eye shapes and bone structure. I wanted a different, bright, heavily pigmented color on each model’s eyelid and used the same brown crease color on each girl to keep them connected. Lashes were also key. I wanted to use length, but not too much volume and certainly nothing too “clumpy” or spider like. The lashes were meant to draw you into the eye, not to focus on a mass of lash hair. For a few of the models, when appropriate, I matched the cheek color with the lid. Otherwise, all of the models were lightly contoured because we really wanted a clean and more natural looking image. Lip color also depended on the model and the color palette that we chose for the eyes. The eyes were certainly the focal point of the shoot and I did not want to distract with a strong lip.

Between the fantastic lighting, photographic genius and passion of Pino Gomes, the amazing models who worked their magic and me just enhancing their already natural and stunning beauty with some strong colors and love for makeup, we made some beautiful images. Enjoy…